American Indian stories eBook

IV.

Retrospection.

Leaving my mother, I returned to the school in the
East. As months passed over me, I slowly comprehended
that the large army of white teachers in Indian schools
had a larger missionary creed than I had suspected.

It was one which included self-preservation quite
as much as Indian education. When I saw an opium-eater
holding a position as teacher of Indians, I did not
understand what good was expected, until a Christian
in power replied that this pumpkin-colored creature
had a feeble mother to support. An inebriate
paleface sat stupid in a doctor’s chair, while
Indian patients carried their ailments to untimely
graves, because his fair wife was dependent upon him
for her daily food.

I find it hard to count that white man a teacher who
tortured an ambitious Indian youth by frequently reminding
the brave changeling that he was nothing but a “government
pauper.”

Though I burned with indignation upon discovering
on every side instances no less shameful than those
I have mentioned, there was no present help.
Even the few rare ones who have worked nobly for my
race were powerless to choose workmen like themselves.
To be sure, a man was sent from the Great Father to
inspect Indian schools, but what he saw was usually
the students’ sample work made for exhibition.
I was nettled by this sly cunning of the workmen who
hookwinked the Indian’s pale Father at Washington.

My illness, which prevented the conclusion of my college
course, together with my mother’s stories of
the encroaching frontier settlers, left me in no mood
to strain my eyes in searching for latent good in my
white co-workers.

At this stage of my own evolution, I was ready to
curse men of small capacity for being the dwarfs their
God had made them. In the process of my education
I had lost all consciousness of the nature world about
me. Thus, when a hidden rage took me to the small
white-walled prison which I then called my room, I
unknowingly turned away from my one salvation.

Alone in my room, I sat like the petrified Indian
woman of whom my mother used to tell me. I wished
my heart’s burdens would turn me to unfeeling
stone. But alive, in my tomb, I was destitute!

For the white man’s papers I had given up my
faith in the Great Spirit. For these same papers
I had forgotten the healing in trees and brooks.
On account of my mother’s simple view of life,
and my lack of any, I gave her up, also. I made
no friends among the race of people I loathed.
Like a slender tree, I had been uprooted from my mother,
nature, and God. I was shorn of my branches,
which had waved in sympathy and love for home and
friends. The natural coat of bark which had protected
my oversensitive nature was scraped off to the very
quick.

Now a cold bare pole I seemed to be, planted in a
strange earth. Still, I seemed to hope a day
would come when my mute aching head, reared upward
to the sky, would flash a zigzag lightning across the
heavens. With this dream of vent for a long-pent
consciousness, I walked again amid the crowds.